﻿GRIS is a new game designed by Nomada Studio that leads users through a surreal watercolor inspired landscape filled with crimson mountains, square trees, and overgrown ruins. The style of and thinking behind this visual experience are revolutionary. There is no danger or death in the detailed lurid pastel world, but rather, the opportunity for meditative exploration with the main character as she unlocks new worlds and abilities. The video game features an original score, which perfectly matches the tone of its soft, gestural graphics.

The game design mimics the way watercolor pools on paper, with splotches of color often falling outside of the lines in the main character’s face, the hills she slides down or the trees that she interacts with. “In our game the scenery is very important, and sometimes takes the spotlight over the main character,” says the studio.

GRIS is the first video game by the Barcelona-based Nomada studio, and will be released this December for both Nintendo Switch and PC.

The head of Leda (c.1505–08), on view at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

The innovative yet timeless drawings of Leonardo da Vinci will soon be arriving in mailboxes around the U.K., thanks to a special stamp release marking the quincentennial anniversary of the Italian artist’s death. In tandem with the special stamp edition, twelve cultural institutions throughout the United Kingdom will be showcasing a total of 144 of da Vinci’s works in the dispersed show Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing. The exhibitions opened at the beginning of February and are on view through May 6, 2019 in Glasgow, Cardiff, Bristol, Leeds, and other U.K. cities. Stamp sets are available from Royal Mail.

The skeleton (c.1510–11) on view at Cymru/National Museum Wales, Cardiff

The head of St. Philip (c.1495) on view at Millennium Gallery, Sheffield

Studies of cats (c.1517–18) on view at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

The skull sectioned (1489), on view at Ulster Museum, Belfast

The skeleton (c.1510–11) on view at Cymru/National Museum Wales, Cardiff

A star-of-Bethlehem and other plants (c.1506–12), on view at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow

The fall of light on a face (c.1488), on view at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

At first glance, it’s impossible to tell where the Old Sag Harbor Road residence is located as it’s surrounded by trees in its own private enclave. The four-story contemporary home in Southampton, New York offers an escape from real life with its peaceful landscape making it feel like a sanctuary. It was designed by Blaze Makoid Architecture, with the help of one of the homeowners who’s an interior designer with a freshly obtained architecture degree, to be a retreat perched atop of the wooded lot that comes complete with seamless indoor/outdoor living.

A negative edge swimming pool is just steps away from the main living area, connected by floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors that disappear.

This shiny, spherical satellite resembling a disco ball is currently traveling around our planet in an attempt to "to serve as a focal point for humanity and reminder about our fragile place in the universe".

No matter where you are in the world, or what is happening in your life, everyone will be able to see the Humanity Star in the night sky.

— Peter Beck | Founder of Rocket Lab

The satellite is made from carbon fiber and has 65 reflective panels that reflect sunlight back to Earth. The Humanity Star spins rapidly, creating a blinking flashing effect.

The Humanity Star launched in January from New Zealand and orbits the Earth every 90 minutes. It will continue through September before it starts to decay and is pulled back into Earth's gravity, ultimately burning up on reentry. You can track in real-time the location of the satellite on a website.

For a recent commission from indie record label Albert’s Favourites, London-based designer Tim Easley created an intricate circuitboard completely out of plasticine clay. The finished work measures approximately 20 inches square (50 x 50 cm) and took the artist about 80 hours to complete. He then photographed the clay circuitboard with birds-eye and angled aerial views to create the final album artwork.

Easley created the project for the London-based electronic music duo Modified Man. He describes the work, which envisions an abstracted future perspective on today’s technology, on Behance: “The idea behind the cover was how the modified men of the future may make artwork out of ancient circuit boards, not quite understanding what they were for because of their crude appearance.”

Designer Rosa de Jong produces micro homes that are built into the side of tiny cliffs constructed out of cork. Her miniature environments are covered in fake moss and dotted with modeling trees, which add an enchanting element to the small homes. Previously she has suspended her creations in glass tubes, which created the illusion that the works were floating in mid-air.

Her most recent pieces hang between two panes of glass and are secured with thin wires. De Jong collaborated with her father to create the wooden frames for the structures, which include tiny wheels that allow the owner to adjust the position of the floating islands.

Two of her new works, Remembered and Imagined, will be shown simultaneously at an upcoming dual-city exhibition which opens on August 24, 2018 at Paradigm Gallery in Philadelphia and August 30, 2018 at Antler Gallery in Portland, Oregon. You can see more of the Amsterdam-based designer’s miniature homes on Instagram and her Micro Matter website.

Today, views of the world’s ancient architectural wonders are firmly based in their current state of ruin, leaving to visitors’ imaginations the original glory of structures like the Parthenon, the Pyramid of the Sun, and the Temple of Luxor. NeoMam, in a project for Expedia, has resurrected several ancient buildings through a series of gifs. In a matter of seconds, centuries of natural and intentional damage and decay are reversed to reveal a rare glimpse of what the original structures would have most likely looked like in their prime. The creative contractors behind the labor-intensive renderings are Maja Wrońska and her husband Przemek Sobiecki, who works as This Is Render.

Of late, a peculiar trend has been storming design communities by force and its pretty atypical. Current creative directions are being increasingly influenced by design movements that were once considered archived. What does this mean? It means that the 90’s are back and that designers are focusing their gaze on the styles and trends that made it big during that extra special decade.

Elvis Benício and Lostctrl recently published this project on their Behance profiles and it’s pretty easy to the pinpoint the main influence behind this project. It has that grunge look that was originally created by distorting typography and usually included a mix of primitive shapes. In this project, those two aforementioned elements are masterfully interwoven with black and white photography to synch all the different pieces together. It seems that all the ingredients for the 90’s look and feel are present.

A distinctive Grunge look created by distorting typography, the implementation of black and white photography, and the mix of primitive shapes in lurid colors are all reminiscent nods to classical designs from the 1990’s.

— Elvis Benício and Lostctrl

Dear god is a brand identity project for an up and coming music festival in São Paulo, Brazil. Elvis Benício and Lostctrl teamed up to put a different edge on the branding for this event and the outcome is both fresh and relevant for the many music lovers who grew up in the 1990’s.